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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28628490">administrative mix-up</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magicians (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Death Fix, Fix-It, M/M, Memory Loss, The Magicians Season 4 Ending Fix-It</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:07:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,768</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28628490</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Alice and Eliot go to see Quentin's mother to tell her what happened to Quentin... they're in for a bit of a surprise.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous, Peaches and Plums Stockings 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>administrative mix-up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakenByEmrys/gifts">TakenByEmrys</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“We need to do this,” Alice said shakily, and Eliot nodded. She was right. He raised his hand, rang the doorbell, and straightened his shoulders.<br/>
<br/>
It was only fair he take the lead in this. Eliot might have daddy issues up the wazoo, but Alice’s mommy issues were just as skyscraper high. This was a mom, so it was his territory.<br/>
<br/>
He also knew how shitty Quentin’s mom had been to him, though, so Eliot was angry, and barely holding anything together. Thank goodness for drugs. Although, considering all the kinds of things that <em>had</em> turned out to be real, Eliot wouldn’t be surprised if goodness had an actual personification—and that personification was probably a total dick.<br/>
<br/>
After a long minute, where Eliot had to fight hard to push down every instinct inside him to run the fuck away, there was the sound of irritated footsteps and then the door slammed open.<br/>
<br/>
“Yes?”<br/>
<br/>
For a second, Eliot couldn’t talk. He knew he was coming to talk to Quentin’s mom. He was braced for that. Someone had to tell her that her son was dead and never coming back. But he hadn’t prepared himself for just how much of Quentin was in her face.<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t want to buy anything you might be selling—“ Quentin’s mom started.<br/>
<br/>
“We’re not selling anything,” Alice said, because she was braver than Eliot. She always had been. “We’re uh—we’re friends of Quentin’s. Um. From his grad school? And we—“<br/>
<br/>
“Oh thank fuck,” Quentin’s mom interrupted. Eliot and Alice startled at her vehemence. “I was starting to think none of you gave a crap. Look, I know I’ve not been a perfect mom—far from it—but I’m here now, and I’m trying, and I couldn’t believe <em>no one</em> would come—“<br/>
<br/>
Oh. She knew. Somehow she already knew? Eliot felt dizzy. Well. That was good, he supposed. He still wasn’t sure how he had expected the “your son is dead and it’s probably my fault” conversation to go.<br/>
<br/>
“Well,” Eliot said, shakily, because if she knew, was there going to be an official funeral? Had she already held it, sans-body? Alice looked uncertain too, like she had no idea what was going on. Alice generally knew everything, so a clueless Alice was almost as frightening as a niffin Alice. “We were hoping to—“<br/>
<br/>
“I’ll just go get him for you,” Quentin’s mom said, interrupting again.<br/>
<br/>
Alice’s expression swiftly switched to even deeper confusion. What the fuck? Eliot shrugged at her. Grief made people crazy, he supposed?<br/>
<br/>
“Quentin,” Quentin’s mom yelled. “Q, honey, get your ass down here. Friends from that school of yours.”<br/>
<br/>
“Oh dear,” Alice murmured, her expression switching again, this time to empathy. She clearly had come to the same conclusion Eliot had: Mama Coldwater had lost her mind.<br/>
<br/>
“Maybe we should go,” Eliot suggested, because cowardice was always an option and it seemed like a reasonable one.<br/>
<br/>
Right until a voice floated down the stairs, “I’ll be right there.”<br/>
<br/>
Eliot’s heart decided to take a vacation for the span of a couple of heartbeats. He hoped it had fucked off somewhere nice because his brain was apparently joining Quentin’s mom is loony town. Because that. That sounded exactly like—but it couldn’t be.<br/>
<br/>
Alice’s eyes were wide. She looked frozen at first glance, but on second glance, Eliot could see her hands were trembling.<br/>
<br/>
He wanted to reach out and take one in his own but, y’know. Cowardice. Yay.<br/>
<br/>
Except maybe the entire world was loony town, because one moment later, one Quentin Makepeace Coldwater appeared behind his mom, and —<br/>
<br/>
Yeah.<br/>
<br/>
So that was an actual thing happening today.<br/>
<br/>
Alice stared at Quentin, and then back at Eliot, like she was searching for an answer.<br/>
<br/>
“Huh,” Eliot offered coherently, after a good second of thought.<br/>
<br/>
</p>
<hr/><p><br/>
After that, things happened fast. Eliot’s head hurt. Quentin had no memories of Brakebills, but that didn’t stop Margo whisking him away from his mom’s house to the Penthouse with some flimsy comment about banging his memories back into him which any good parent might have contested, but Mama Coldwater was obviously not a good parent. Did any of them have a good parent? Ted Coldwater had been pretty chill, by all accounts. One good parent between a whole score of them. Disgraceful.<br/>
<br/>
Eliot’s heart was pounding in his ears. Vodka wasn’t drowning out the sound, but he still continued to give it a good old college try, right until Margo forcibly took it away and made him drink water instead because she was a beautiful and horrifically beastly perfect goddess who walked among mortals and she lived to make Eliot’s life miserable-slash-bearable.<br/>
<br/>
The other questers milled around in a blur, leaving Eliot to drink and scowl, while an oblivious, bemused Quentin put up with being prodded and poked and questioned. He took magic being real remarkably well.<br/>
<br/>
It was Quentin, but it wasn’t.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s Quentin, our Quentin,” Lipson said. “Wow you guys are like fucking Teflon, can anything kill you?”<br/>
<br/>
“No time remnants or curses or—“ Julia started.<br/>
<br/>
“None,” Lipson shrugged. “He’s ours. Missing a few memories. They might come back. You never know.”<br/>
<br/>
“You’re as helpful as ever, El,” Margo said, and Eliot opened his mouth to protest he didn’t deserve her dry sarcasm, until he realized Margo was talking to Lipson. Was Lipson called Eliot too? How odd. Perhaps she would be okay being known as Todd the Second.<br/>
<br/>
Moments later, Penny the Second blipped back in with a flushed and infuriated Kady at his side, and the questers were all go again. Eliot leaned back and let them. This was all remarkably too much, if he was being honest.<br/>
<br/>
A warm touch at his elbow did rouse him a little—Margo settling in close. Bless her. He didn’t deserve her. But she always deserved what she wanted, and for some reason, Eliot was what she wanted. So Eliot was gonna damn well let her have him.<br/>
<br/>
Kady’s cheeks were flushed as she moved to stand in front of the group, and she looked defiantly upset.<br/>
<br/>
“She must have seen Penny,” Margo surmised in a murmur, and Eliot’s heart pinched for her. But not as much as it might have. It turned out having an alive Quentin around—albeit a confused, blank sort of one—went all kinds of ways towards improving his general mood and outlook on life.<br/>
<br/>
Kady confirmed swiftly that yes, she had seen her Penny, and no, she didn’t want to talk about that. But she had news and she’d like to get it out, thanks, so she could have a decent sulk about not even being able to drink away her sorrows now, fuck.<br/>
<br/>
She snapped out her explanation, Kady-style brusque.<br/>
<br/>
“Apparently when Hades went awol, the underground got messed up. Some renegade gave out unearned metro cards—whatever the fuck that means—and the pig train went missing—and so processing got backed up. They only now got around to properly processing Q.”<br/>
<br/>
“And?” Alice interrupted sharply.<br/>
<br/>
Kady flickered her a sour glance. “And because of the whole timeline thing Jane Chatwin did to us, the underworld was used to processing doubles, and once they’d untangled her shenanigans, they had forty slots for everyone pre-registered, just in case.”<br/>
<br/>
“And how does that relate to this?”<br/>
<br/>
If Kady snapped and stabbed Alice for interrupting, Eliot probably couldn’t blame her.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m getting to that,” Kady said through gritted teeth. “Anyway. The system said they already had forty Quentin’s. So I guess someone in processing assumed there was an error—and sent him back.”<br/>
<br/>
“How could that even happen?” Margo folded her arms skeptically. “And because I refuse to believe that I can’t have bought it in every single one of Jane Fuckface’s giddy tilt-o’-whirls in time; does this mean I can clone myself a few times, murder myself, and then live forever? Because I’d do it.”<br/>
<br/>
“They’ve caught the flaw in the system now so it can’t be repeated,” Kady said. “Although now I’m regretting admitting that because there’s been times where I’d have been happy murdering you too.”<br/>
<br/>
“Aw, babe, you say the sweetest things,” Margo said, and then side-muttered to Eliot, “I can’t be mad at her for that, I do keep drinking the last of the juice and not replacing it. I’m a renegade like that.”<br/>
<br/>
Normally Eliot would chuckle, eternally charmed by his Bambi’s antics, but he couldn’t even manage a smile. His heart was pounding. It sounded like... this was their Quentin.<br/>
<br/>
“How could Q have already died forty times though?” Julia frowned. “The underworld counts souls, right? So even in your timeline, when he died but Alice brought him back—“<br/>
<br/>
“Love being reminded of that,” Penny 2 murmured, but it was without heat, and tempered by one of his Julia-besotted expressions.<br/>
<br/>
“Maybe old sneaky Jane reset time more than thirty-nine times,” Josh suggested.<br/>
<br/>
“Maybe,” Alice said, looking pole-axed. Eliot was an expert on knowing how that actually felt. He’d actually been pole-axed. Life was... really fucked up. But at least death was turning out to have a few surprises in it too.<br/>
<br/>
“Oh. Oh. He did die!” Margo yelled. “In our timeline! So no wonder the system or whatever got fucked up.”<br/>
<br/>
“I know we all died after the cursed thrones fiasco,” Alice started, dubiously, “but that was just temporarily, and—“<br/>
<br/>
“During the key quest,” Margo cut through, folding her arms and posing dramatically. “I got a damn letter from the past, right? But it was from Quentin, saying he and Eliot had lived some long, bullshit life but were dead now, and then I had to go dig up a corpse to get them back—and I stopped you and Q from going back in time and getting stuck! But. I guess one version of you I didn’t stop and those suckers died?” She turned and thumped Eliot in the upper arm triumphantly. She was strong, and her tiny punches always stung like a motherfucker, but even though she didn’t hold back, Eliot barely felt it.<br/>
<br/>
“This all sounds very peculiar,” Quentin said, softly. Julia squeezed his arm and Quentin smiled at her widely.<br/>
<br/>
Eliot’s face felt warm. A Quentin without his memories of Brakebills was essentially pre-Brakebills Quentin, and he was in love with Julia Wicker. He had no idea—who Eliot was—or Teddy—Eliot’s the only one who knows—who would ever know—Kady was still talking but Eliot couldn’t hear it; the world was a whine in his ears. He had to get out of there. Now. <em>Now.</em><br/>
<br/>
He was faintly aware of Quentin saying. “Wait, who <em>is</em> that?” as he stumbled out of the Penthouse and neatly three up into a plant pot because Eliot would always be the glamorous kind of lush who knew how to find somewhere semi-discreet to vomit. “Just Eliot,” someone said, as the doors closed behind him.<br/>
<br/>
Just Eliot. God. That’s all he was. Just Eliot. But maybe that was a blessing. Because for months, he was Eliot plus Monster. Eliot lite. Eliot consumed by Monster. Maybe being Just Eliot is a good thing.<br/>
<br/>
He should focus on that. Just Eliot. No one to know the secrets he was hiding. No one had to know anything about him. It was all gonna be fine.<br/>
<br/>
When a warm hand touched his shoulder, Eliot thought it’s Margo, so when he turned and saw Kady, it was a surprise.<br/>
<br/>
She looked at him with a soft, too-astute expression. Eliot...really didn’t like that somehow she seemed to have figured out how to see right through him. It was uncomfortable. Especially considering how much he was actually hiding.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s a lot, huh?” she said.<br/>
<br/>
Eliot straightened up from his self-pitying crouch and nodded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah,” he admitted.<br/>
<br/>
Kady’s grin quirked. “I think we accidentally made it worse.”<br/>
<br/>
Eliot frowned at her, rage suddenly firing in his chest. He was surprised by that. He’d been starting to wonder if he’d feel any strong emotion ever again. “How?” His voice was barely a whisper, wrecked from throwing up. He sounded kind of bad-ass, actually; it was a pity Kady was the only one to hear it, because speaking like a bad-ass to a certified bad-ass was a zero-sum game.<br/>
<br/>
“Julia did a spell to get him his memories back. It worked to a point? It, uh— you’d better come and see,” Kady said, inclining her head.<br/>
<br/>
Frowning, Eliot shamefacedly shuffled back to the Penthouse, embarrassed that he’d been so weak, and that everyone would know he was still a fucking basket case post-possession, and—<br/>
<br/>
Quentin threw himself solidly into Eliot’s arms.<br/>
<br/>
“El,” Quentin was murmuring, over and over again, “El, what the fuck, where the fuck were you, I’m so glad you’re here too—“<br/>
<br/>
And Eliot couldn’t help it, a noise just ripped from his throat, a sharp abomination of a noise, because the Quentin that was in his arms and solid and <em>real</em> was looking up at him not with curious, blank eyes—he was looking at Eliot with open recognition. And open love.<br/>
<br/>
Eliot’s eyes stung and he stared back, happily, and let himself believe for a second that whatever rabbit hole he’d fallen into this time wasn’t going to fuck him over for once.<br/>
<br/>
Of course, one should never think that. Not in their business.<br/>
<br/>
“No one’s making any sense,” Quentin said, pulling back so he could talk, but lingering in the comforting circle of Eliot’s arms where, even though Alice was eyeing him with extreme judgement, Eliot was loathe to evict their occupant. He could feel Quentin breathing. No drug tripped this good. “Magic’s back but I’m dead and you were possessed and—I don’t understand. How did we do it? How could we—we be back here—and nobody knows—“<br/>
<br/>
Quentin’s eyes were flittering over Eliot’s face rapidly, hummingbird-fast, matching the skittering rate of Eliot’s heartbeat.<br/>
<br/>
“You were dead,” Eliot said, shakily. “Now you’re alive. The rest we can figure out.”<br/>
<br/>
“Don’t fob me off, El. The last thing I remember—we were working on the mosaic—waiting for Ari to come back from her aunt’s house with Teddy—“<br/>
<br/>
“A lot has happened since then,” Eliot said, his heart thumping even more loudly in his ears. He felt shaky as hell. But this couldn’t be hell, because Quentin was here, and he was alive, and everything else could never matter, compared to that. “Just bear with us—“<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t need to be protected from bad news, Eliot. I’m a grown man. Just tell me. What happened to our wife. What <em>happened to our son?</em>”<br/>
<br/>
Eliot’s fingers tightened and he stared at Quentin helplessly, even though he was aware now of what was going on around them, and what a strange tableau this must actually make. He felt lighter—who knew that shit about the truth setting you free was actually true? Because that was what happening. His lifetime with Quentin at the mosaic wasn’t going to be a secret anymore. But that was okay. As long as Quentin was alive.<br/>
<br/>
“Eliot, if you can explain any of this, and why Quentin thinks he has a wife and a kid with you, then you’d better start talking fast,” Margo hissed, sounding pretty betrayed. She’d get over it, Eliot knew it. He and Quentin had spent fifty years fixing a puzzle just to get back to her, after all.<br/>
<br/>
“I can maybe fix this, if I know what’s going on,” Julia said, more gently, although anyone speaking after Margo had a relatively easy bar to clear on that front.<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t think they sent back our Quentin, not exactly,” Eliot said, staring at Quentin, fighting to see him through the tears that fell despite his best efforts not to. He wanted to remember every single second of this, and clearly, not as a blur.<br/>
<br/>
“Then which Quentin <em>did</em> come back?” Alice said, sounding desperately unhappy for being in a world where any Quentin was alive. Eliot should feel bad for her on some level, but he was too busy feeling so many other things. Joy. His heart was a freaking symphony of happiness right now, even if heartbreak was threatening too. But fuck, Quentin could get every single memory back right now, and choose Alice, and Eliot still would feel like he could fly. It’s Quentin. He loved him. So fucking much. Why was he ever scared of that?<br/>
<br/>
“Eliot,” Alice repeated, her voice flint-hard. “Which Quentin did they send back?”<br/>
<br/>
Eliot smiled down at Quentin, unable to stop. “I think they sent back <em>mine</em>.”</p>
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